“I’m kind of at peace with any outcome,” Bowen Yang said by phone earlier this week, with the equanimity of someone slouching toward enlightenment. The Saturday Night Live regular was referring to his Fran Lebowitz impression, the anticipatory stress of which loomed for days in the run-up to this past weekend’s episode. “If she hated it, then that’s fine. If she enjoyed it, then that’s great,” Yang reasoned, not accounting for the possibility that she hasn’t watched it at all. (She hasn’t, though her answering machine went wild.) “In any case, I will never lose the respect for her that I’ve had for, I mean, a decade-plus at this point, since I found out who she was when I moved to the city and read her books,” he said. One can imagine what was going through his head in those early years: a voice sounding like Bowen sounding like Fran, imploring him to “be something useful! Be a piece of melon wrapped in prosciutto.”
Yang, of course, has made himself indispensable as “America’s sweetheart” (so says Vulture) on SNL. His turns as a TikTok-ing Chinese official wearing a Fenty-collab Rolex or a West Village cabaret emcee will be bright spots in the time capsule of this weird year. Las Culturistas, the podcast he cohosts with Matt Rogers, feels like the closest approximation to having funny friends over to talk about why Meg Stalter should sub in for Samantha in the Sex and the City reboot. And soon, during his breaks from SNL, Yang will start filming season two of Awkwafina’s Comedy Central series, Nora from Queens—a creative counter rhythm to the white-knuckled ride at 30 Rock.
Still, it’s clear in this three-day wellness diary that Yang has figured out his escapes, whether he’s steeped in a souped-up bath or lulled by the “informational backwash” of recap-heavy 90 Day Fiancé. “Right now, what’s sustaining me, what’s nurturing me, is just pure consumption in every sense,” he said. “Getting a TV in my bedroom was something that I decided to do five months into the pandemic because I was finally, like, You know what? I might as well make my apartment feel like a hotel room.” But the SNL hustle has its rewards. “I think this show has a way of keeping the ball in the air for everyone—energetically, spiritually, work ethic–wise—because you’re just watching everyone around you work so hard,” he said. “I can’t be the jerk who just, like, phones it in.” Unless it’s a message on Fran’s machine.
9:30 a.m.: Am blasted awake by my clock app’s preloaded xylophone music, which, as I walk to the bathroom, makes me realize it’s become the de facto alarm sound in modern times. Does this mean anyone who wants to play the glockenspiel professionally has to be O.K. with making ringtone music? Now I feel bad for thinking ringtones are some inferior art form. Starting off the day with poultices of guilt like this is what keeps me feeling sexy, joyful, grounded. I brush my teeth, splash water on my face, and pat some niacinamide concoction on my cheeks so that I look basically fine.
10 a.m.: Time for therapy. I switched to a CBT specialist in the last few months, and even though we’re still finding our groove, he’s good at intuiting what’s going on based on even the least subtextual things I say. I’ll go, “Work was good yesterday,” and he’ll pause and say, “You’re having trouble accessing your anger” or something like that. And he’ll be right! He never makes it sound like an assumption, which feels like a real skill. It’s all virtual, of course, and this week I use a clip-on light panel for my laptop so I don’t look like a backlit mound. I wait for him to call this out, to maybe unpack why I feel the need to look presentable for something as candid as therapy, but he doesn’t, and I am grateful.
11:30 a.m.: I eat a banana for (late) breakfast and drink a terrible infused coffee I bought from a farmers’ market. Then I make a salad of my daily capsules in a little pinch bowl and am bored enough to post to main.
People in the comments yell at me to not take my fiber supplements at the same time as my PrEP because of some malabsorption thing. Quietly I thank them since this is genuinely good to know. Social media is perfect. No notes!
12 p.m.: It’s our first week back at SNL after the holiday break, and Thursdays can be nice, recuperative days for cast members to run errands, do chores, maybe think of ideas for non-lucrative side businesses. I have a few hours to kill, so I load the dishwasher and immediately think that’s enough domesticity for today. Lunch is a pre-packaged fajita protein bowl from a service that my friend and fellow comedian Joel Kim Booster told me about. My adult life has revolved around Single-White-Femaling him, so I eat the Joel bowl with elan.
4 p.m.: After answering emails, checking a Marco Polo thread I’m on (more on that later), and watching last night’s excellent Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (in which one of the housewives gets her comeuppance within the group dynamic), I do a Zoom meeting with our podcast team at Las Culturistas. It’s a classic touch-base, where Matt Rogers is great at mixing his goofiness with a sober businesslike tone. I have to run early because my car pickup is here to take me to 30 Rock to block a sketch I’m in.
5:30 p.m.: I arrive to work and take a PCR test, and I have a couple more hours to kill in my dressing room before the studio needs me on the floor. I decide to do the New York Times crossword, but not on the iPhone app because Honey, They Shrunk the Keyboard for No Reason At All. Someone on their product team is enforcing their small-thumbs agenda on us and it’s pure evil. The puzzle itself is surprisingly easy for a Thursday, but I can’t figure out what 44 across, a female kangaroo, is.
6:45 p.m.: I get distracted and look up Fran Lebowitz videos since I may do an impression of her on Saturday. I go back to the crossword. The clock has been running the whole time while I still can’t figure out female kangaroo. Then I chat with some coworkers in the halls. We all remark on how rusty we all feel from the long break, but we promise to rally and do our best.
7:30 p.m.: Female kangaroos are called does, which feels like deer appropriation, but whatever. I clock in at 1:34:44. Humiliating.
8:15 p.m.: I get called to the floor to block, which mostly consists of waiting around and being told where to stand when it cuts to a certain camera. For this particular sketch all of this happens over the course of 30-ish minutes, which is extremely quick by SNL standards.
9:45 p.m.: The wind-down tonight consists of a grilled cheese sandwich, a Korean mugwort mask to soothe my skin, and RuPaul’s Drag Race U.K. It’s only episode 3, but the elimination is a dramatic upset that leaves me stunned as I go to bed.
10:30 a.m.: Didn’t sleep well last night because I kept stressing over the Fran impression. There are a million reasons why working at SNL is one of the least sleep-hygienic jobs in showbiz, and this week it’s because I don’t know if I can nail Ms. Lebowitz’s hand gestures. I was very on top of my sleep schedule over the holidays, because any break from the show is about building the dam back up before another wave of work demolishes it immediately.
10:42 a.m.: Breakfast is scrambled eggs and salsa on toast, with another slice that has strawberry preserves from Lorne’s farm. His passion for canning shelf-stable jams is seconded only by his love for Paul Simon.
12 p.m.: I do a circuit workout on an app called SHRED, which is fine as names go, especially compared to the workouts on it: hook-lunge-squat-dips and bicycle-boat-holds and inverted-burpee-climbers. I wonder if there’s space to queer the nomenclature in fitness. Maybe we call a goblet squat a Dannii Minogue instead? Just an idea.
1:02 p.m.: I hop in the shower. Then at the mirror it’s more niacinamide (toner and serum) on my face, a water cream formulated by a skin-care YouTuber I like, and the quintessential SPF that almost every Asian uses.
1:15 p.m.: Lunch is a berry protein smoothie. I open a pouch of frozen berries over my sink and half of it spills on the floor because I pull too hard. Am I okay? The smoothie turns out fine.
1:30 p.m.: I’m in my final window to do chores before I spend the next 36 hours spinning out about Saturday’s show. I fold laundry, iron my bedding, and change my sheets. Swapping a duvet cover is the most stressful chore in the world to me, and I haven’t figured out a way to do it without scuba diving into a giant sac of linen and figuring out if I’m tying the right knots in each corner.
1:55 p.m.: I run out to pick up sundries: floss, deodorant, and two bottles of wine (a cheap red and an Alsacean pinot gris because sure). I come home and I’m tired.
2:30 p.m.: Time for a nap, I think? I draw the curtains and put on some old 90 Day Fiancé episode to lull me to sleep. It’s white noise in every sense.
5 p.m.: I’ve been up from my nap for a couple hours, but now it’s time for a rewrite table over Zoom for the Fran Lebowitz feature. My co-writers Sudi Green and Anna Drezen (both geniuses) spend the next couple hours reworking it with me so that it flows better. Then I start to drill it on my own time until my mouth dries up.
7:30 p.m.: Dinner is leftover dumplings from Mr. Bao, a great new place in Park Slope. I check in with the Marco Polo group again, which is simply named “Quar Talk” and has been going strong since the beginning of the pandemic. It comprises some wonderful comedians, and we have decided to use this wellness diary to come out of the shadows and reveal ourselves one by one in a misguided challenge to the media, for them to find out who we are as if anyone would care. We decide that I should reveal Cole Escola as a member, and that they will reveal another person the next time they have a press opportunity.
11:45 p.m.: Pandemic life has turned me into a freak for baths, and my process is involved enough to make it fun. I pour in some bubble bath, add a pouch of Japanese onsen powder, and place some candles around the bathroom for ambiance. Cotton Poplin is always in the mix, and Apotheke is usually there too. I play some Victoria Monét and vibe out like a sexy prune, and I am grateful.
9:30 a.m.: I set my alarm for 10 a.m., but I get a bunch of texts from friends and wake up to the news that SOPHIE died in an accident. It is a truly shocking death, and I am immediately hit with grief. SOPHIE’s music and influence was such a comfort to me and my friends, and she truly defined what queer music today sounds like. I read some snippets of her interviews along with people’s tributes to her on Instagram, and the heartbreak of it all cuts through the stress I’ve pent up over the last few days.
10:30 a.m.: I take a frigid walk to Ciao, Gloria and buy a coffee along with my favorite bacon egg and cheese in the city. I listen to “It’s Okay to Cry” for the dozenth time on the way home and shed a tear. It really is such a huge loss.
11:45 a.m.: I run the Fran piece one more time before the car comes to pick me up. It’s at this point that all of the wellness-y containment booms I’ve carefully placed through the week start to drift out and float away, because the day of an SNL show is incredibly frenetic while you basically white-knuckle it until 1 a.m. The whole thing is very, very disorienting, but I am trying to go into the day without being too attached to any outcome.
1:30 p.m.: I’m cleared to go into the studio after a rapid test, and before anyone comes and pulls me away, I take 10 minutes in my dressing room to meditate. It’s my typical Saturday ritual, but this week I went to my physician’s assistant who sweetly recommended I try some chakra alignment to deal with my stress. I’ve never looked into it before this week, but in my office I find something on YouTube to help clear my throat chakra. By the end I can’t really discern what the specific effect is, but it’s still a good mindfulness reset in any case.
4 p.m.: I chug waters throughout the day, along with some sugar-free Red Bull to keep my energy up. I look at this bouquet of bottles and cans on my desk and realize that I’m drinking like a drugged-out twink at a rave.
9:30 p.m.: I do Fran at dress rehearsal. There are some easy trims in the script that Sudi and Anna go over with me. I then watch the tape back on my phone and see that I’m hunching my shoulders too much. I’ve gotten worse and worse at watching myself on camera over time. I’m not really sure why, and in this particular case it’s very dissociative, but I make some corrective mental notes and remind myself to have fun.
10:45 p.m.: Fran makes it in the air show. I give it up to God and hope for the best.
1 a.m.: The show is done. Ego Nwodim and Heidi Gardner wear cute looks for goodnights.
There are no after parties in COVID world and everyone just goes home as soon as we finish, but I manage to sneak Ego into my dressing room and make us some bad vodka sodas in paper cups. We shoot the breeze for a couple hours, and I’m happy I steal a moment of connection/camaraderie at what is usually an isolating job to begin with. I go home and immediately go to bed, and I am grateful.
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